Petaluma's Caymas Systems closes

<p>Petaluma startup Caymas Systems, which made a brief splash in the market for network access control technology, has shut down.</p><p>The 5-year-old business raised $37 million in venture funds, but ran low on cash earlier this year, former chief executive Sanjay Uppal said.</p><p>"We spent a fair amount of money, but we never did get to the profitability stage," he said. "We were spending more money than we were taking in."</p><p>Last week, Caymas sold its assets to Citrix Systems, a Florida company that makes related technology. A handful of Caymas employees now are working at a Citrix facility in Santa Clara.</p><p>The value of the deal was not disclosed.</p><p>Caymas, founded in 2002 by tech industry veteran Terry Brown, developed identity-based gateways for computer networks. The technology allowed businesses, government agencies and other customers to strictly control access to their networks.</p><p>It used tagging architecture to verify users' identity, providing different levels of computer access for employees, clients, vendors and other users.</p><p>Caymas grew quickly, selling the technology to banks, hospitals, city governments, food makers and universities. Among its larger customers was The College Board, a New York-based nonprofit that conducts college entrance examinations. The organization used Caymas technology to control access to test scores and other information.</p><p>Within a few months of its first product rollout in 2004, more than 1 million people were using Caymas' technology, the company said.</p><p>Caymas also developed partnerships with industry giants such as Cisco Systems and Microsoft. But it faced growing competition from rival tech companies and needed to cut costs, Uppal said.</p><p>Brown, a former executive with Cisco Systems and Cerent, left Caymas in 2006 and Uppal was brought in to reorganize the business.</p><p>Caymas moved its corporate headquarters from Petaluma to San Jose last year and cut its staff at both locations from about 88 to 45, he said.</p><p>Caymas had earlier shifted its software application team to San Jose, but kept hardware development, testing, network management and billing in Petaluma. Its appliances were assembled by a contract manufacturer in Fremont.</p><p>The company's directors decided to sell when Caymas couldn't raise additional venture capital, Uppal said.</p><p>"Our main sources of funding had gotten cut off," he said.</p><p>The Petaluma office closed in April and Caymas began scaling back in San Jose as it looked for buyers, Uppal said.</p><p>Citrix, which already used Caymas technology in its own access control systems, agreed to acquire the company's intellectual property and hired nine of its key developers and engineers.</p><p>Visitors to Caymas' Web site last week found a notice that the company "had assigned its assets and is no longer an operating entity."</p><p>Uppal, a former Hewlett-Packard executive, now is a vice president of marketing in Citrix's Application Networking Group.</p><p>Citrix isn't providing service or support for Caymas' technology.</p><p>A spokesman at Citrix headquarters in Fort Lauderdale didn't return a call seeking comment. Citrix reported about $1.1 billion in sales in 2006.</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Steve Hart at 521-5205 or steve.hart@pressdemocrat.com.</p>